News - Full Year Results 2016

4th October 2016

Full Year Results for the 52 weeks ended 29 July 2016

This morning, we announced our full year results for the year ended 29 July 2016.

We reported a 7% increase in revenue to £367.5 million. This growth was driven by our Strategic Marketing segment, which delivered growth of 11% on an organic basis along with acquisitive growth of 19%.

Revenue within our Books Segment was 3% ahead of the prior year. These performances were partially offset by a 7% decline in our Marketing Activation segment, due to continued pressure within the grocery retail sector.

This year saw further growth in our Strategic Marketing segment, which contributed 58% (2015: 46%) of the Group’s adjusted operating profit, offset by decline within our Marketing Activation and Books segments.

Towards the end of the year, as previously announced, we experienced the cancellation and deferral of a number of large contracts within our Strategic Marketing segment, reflecting greater caution within our customer base over the allocation of budgets. Whilst we can confirm that this was a short-term challenge and that we have made encouraging progress in replacing those revenues, this nonetheless materially impacted the outturn for the year.

We are confident in our strategy for further growth, and have made progress across our three key priorities:

Enhanced collaboration, with over 150 clients using services of more than one Group business (2015: 106);

Continued international growth, with nine Strategic Marketing businesses serving clients on an international basis; over 37% of Strategic Marketing revenue now comes from clients based outside of the UK (2015: 30%).

Two further Strategic Marketing acquisitions completed during the year: Fripp, Sandeman and Partners (“FSP”), a specialist retail property consultancy, acquired in August 2015; and The App Business (“TAB”), a mobile–led digital consultancy, acquired in January 2016; both trading in line with expectations.

We are pleased to confirm that, after some short-term challenges in the final quarter of the Financial Year, trading across our Strategic Marketing segment has stabilised.
We are excited by the opportunities that the breadth of our marketing services capabilities creates and we are making encouraging progress in bringing in new projects from both existing and new clients. We see significant opportunities to push ahead with our strategic priorities in the year ahead, particular in further organic growth in our Strategic Marketing segment.

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